Kirkbymoorside, United Kingdom
Kirkbymoorside is a town of 2,751 people in England, United Kingdom.
Why visit Kirkbymoorside
Townapedia lists 4 museums and landmarks, 2 parks and trails, 13 places to eat and 1 place to stay in and around town.
Highlights include Ryedale Folk Museum, Neville Castle and Kirkbymoorside Golf.
Weather in Kirkbymoorside
Forecast from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0). Full forecast
About Kirkbymoorside
Kirkbymoorside (), sometimes spelled Kirbymoorside, is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. It is 25 miles (40 km) north of York; midway between Pickering and Helmsley, and on the edge of the North York Moors National Park. The parish had a population of 3,040 in the 2011 census.
From the Wikipedia article Kirkbymoorside (this version), under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Museums and landmarks4
Ryedale Folk Museum
Museum · 2.2 mi
Museum in Hutton le Hole, United Kingdom
Parks, trails and playgrounds2
Restaurants and cafes13
1 more on the map.
Where to stay1
History
Kirkbymoorside is noted as Chirchebi in the Domesday Book of 1086. It has served as a trading hub at least since 1254, when it became a market town. There are two ancient coaching inns extant, The Black Swan with its carved porch, and The George and Dragon, which originated in the 13th century. The Georgian façades point to later periods of commercial prosperity on the coaching route between York and Scarborough.
Some Ancient British, Viking and Anglo-Saxon remains have been found in the vicinity. The Norman baron Robert de Stuteville built a wooden moated castle on Vivers Hill. The estate passed to the Wake family in the 13th century, who brought prosperity to the town. However, it was badly hit by the Black Death of the mid-14th century, after which the wooden castle lay in ruins. Prosperity returned after 1408, when the Neville family took over, although little remains of the fortified manor they built to the north of the town. The Nevilles remained Catholic and took part in the Rising of the North of 1569. By 1660 there was a grammar school. (The building is now part of the library.) The great Toll Booth in the middle of the town was built about 1730 with stone taken from the Nevilles' manor. Kirkbymoorside Memorial Hall, the old market hall, was gutted by fire but rebuilt in 1872. By 1881 the population of the town was 2,337.
Read more of the history
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, died on 16 April 1687, in the house of a local tenant, from a chill caught whilst hunting nearby. The building, Buckingham House is located in the town centre.
Manor Vale, a stretch of woodland managed by the town council, was part of a deer park and contains the Grade II remains of the manor. It contains areas of both acidic and alkaline soil. It is home to a rare beetle species, Oedemera virescens.
In the 1600s and at least until the 1700s, a number of Quakers resided in this area and in nearby Hutton-le-Hole. Kirkbymoorside Quaker Meeting House was built in 1690, although it was significantly modified in 1790 and extended in about 1810. This property is a Grade II listed building. The Quaker evangelist John Richardson died in Hutton-le-Hole in 1753 and was buried at the Meeting Hall's burial site.
In 1874, the North Eastern Railway's Gilling and Pickering line opened, connecting Kirbymoorside station to Helmsley and York. It was extended to Pickering the following year. The regular passenger service (and the track east to Pickering) ceased in 1953 but freight traffic and occasional special passenger trains continued until 1964. The rails between Kirkbymoorside and Pickering were lifted in the 1950s and the A170 road runs over part of the track bed to the east of the town. The station buildings were demolished in 2010 and the site is now occupied, in part, by new houses.
From the History section of Kirkbymoorside on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.
More about Kirkbymoorside
Economy
The town was home to one of the few remaining British producers of light aircraft, Slingsby Aviation. (The other is Britten-Norman on the Isle of Wight). Many sub-sea vehicles and robots are manufactured at Forum Energy Technologies (formerly Perry Slingsby Systems) which is located on the same site, roughly 1 mile south of the town centre.
Arts and culture
The town is home to Kirkbymoorside Town Brass Band, which has achieved success on a national level, most recently winning the North of England Brass Band First Section Championship in 2004, 2008 and 2015. As a result of their 2008 success, the band competed in the National Finals in Harrogate on 28 September 2008 and claimed 3rd place overall.
The anarchist poet and art critic Herbert Read was born in the hamlet of Muscoates, about four miles (6.4 km) south of Kirkbymoorside. The area surrounding the town provided some of the inspiration for his only completed novel, The Green Child.
The town hosts the Ryedale Show, an annual agricultural show, and became one of three main locations where Daisybeck Studios filmed the Channel 5 series The Yorkshire Vet.
Education
Kirkbymoorside has a primary school. The town is in the catchment area of the comprehensive secondary Ryedale School, which is located in Nawton, three miles (5 km) away, and has about 600 pupils.
Kirkbymoorside hosts an annual 10 km road-running race on the Sunday prior to May Day Bank Holiday each year. The race was started in 2000 by Malcolm Hodgson, Dr Tim Hughes and Martin Lush to raise funds for local schools. It is now run by the Friends of Kirkbymoorside CP School and the funds go towards that charity and to the Gillamoor CE (VC) Primary School PTA.
From the Wikipedia article Kirkbymoorside, under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable people from Kirkbymoorside
- Arnold SullivanEnglish cricketer (1878-1943)
- Thomas Pierson FrankBritish engineer (1881–1951)
- Joseph Judsondeputy
Born in Kirkbymoorside, according to Wikidata (CC0). Each name links to its Wikipedia article.
Churches and places of worship16
Shopping3
Gas and EV charging1
Schools, colleges and libraries3
Healthcare1
Map of Kirkbymoorside
44 places. The map loads OpenStreetMap tiles when you open it.
Getting there and nearby towns
Teesside International Airport (MME) is the nearest airport with scheduled flights listed in OpenStreetMap, 26 miles away.
- Helmsley 5 mi west, about 9 min by car
- Thornton Dale 9 mi east, about 14 min by car
- Rillington 12 mi southeast, about 20 min by car
- Sheriff Hutton 13 mi south, about 21 min by car
- Ingleby Greenhow 14 mi northwest, about 23 min by car
- Danby 14 mi north, about 22 min by car
- Sleights 17 mi northeast, about 27 min by car
- Guisborough 19 mi north, about 30 min by car
- Haxby 19 mi south, about 30 min by car
- Scarborough 21 mi east, about 34 min by car
Drive times are estimates from straight-line distance, not routes.
Towns near Kirkbymoorside
Keep exploring
Local news
Headlines from INDB.
Reviews, tips and questions
Loading what members have shared...
Sources and licences
- GeoNames (CC BY 4.0): population, coordinates, regions and time zone
- Mapillary (see each image): photos
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0): places, airports, map data
- Wikidata (CC0 1.0): elevation, founding date, time zone, website, landmarks and historic places
- Wikimedia Commons (see each image): photos
- Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0): overview and history text
Photo credits
- Kirkbymoorside, John Martin, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Garth End House, Kirkbymoorside, Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0
- RyedaleFolkMuseumH4c, Helge Klaus Rieder, CC0
- St Gregory's Minster, Patricia Steel, CC BY-SA 2.0
- LastinghamAbbey, JohnArmagh, Public domain
- Street-level photo, locator, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Street-level photo, southglos, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Street-level photo, locator, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Street-level photo, locator, CC BY-SA 4.0
Page built November 10, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us or suggest a place.